Word: ek
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Measure of Autonomy. Since he is largely doing their bidding, the Soviets do not at present want to discredit Dubček entirely. Ironically, they allowed him last week to put into effect one of his original reforms. It has nothing to do with his innovations in press and political freedom, which have been quashed. The new measure establishes a federal system of government in Czechoslovakia, granting a large degree of autonomy to the country's two main ethnic groups, the Czechs and the Slovaks...
...ek, a Slovak, presented the scheme a year ago when he ousted from power President and Party Boss Antonin Novotny, a Czech. Historically, the more bucolic Slovaks have felt oppressed by the urbanized and sophisticated Czechs, who outnumber them by nearly 3 to 1. Hoping to enhance his support at home, Dubček proposed self-rule as a means of alleviating the old Slovak grievances. At first, the Soviets, who earlier had threatened to break off Slovakia and incorporate it into the Soviet Union, opposed the federal system. They changed their minds when they realized that the reorganization would...
...posts outright Stalinists from the Novotný regime; instead, they prefer respectable, obedient bureaucrats. In Prague's current political argot, these men are called "the realists." The new federal Premier, for example, is Oldřich Černík, who was also Premier during the Dubček period but has since shown his willingness to cooperate with the Soviet occupiers...
...political experience. Ján Marko, the new Foreign Minister, was the chief of the Slovak Commission for Technology. At the provincial level, the new Czech Premier, Stanislav Razl, is a former minister of the chemical industry, and the Slovak Premier, Stefan Sadovský, is a former Dubček supporter who has apparently abandoned his earlier enthusiasm for liberalism in favor of realism...
...Last Hero. The predominance of realists in the new governments has only heightened the tension in Czechoslovakia over the fate of Josef Smrkovský, who, with Dubček's decline, remains the last hero toCzechoslovakia's disillusioned workers, students and intellectuals. An unrepentant liberal, Smrkovský lost his post as president of the National Assembly when that body was abolished to make way for the new legislature. In the new system, he temporarily holds the equivalent post of president of the federal parliament. At the behest of the Russians, the realists have started a campaign to take...